I"M BLACK, YOU"RE WHITE, WHO"S INNOCENT".
Innocence and guilt are the key issues in Shelby Steele's theory presented in his essay "I"m Black, You"re White, Who's Innocent". First he explains what he calls the power of innocence and according to him innocence equals power. .
He claims that races aren't just anymore but competing power groups: if one race, either black or white, can convince the society that it is innocent and a victim it automatically places the guilt on the other race. So that innocence can then be used to cause guilt that ultimately leads to power or, in other words, the less you are blamed for your situation, the more power you will have. To be a victim - to be innocent - is actually to be powerful. .
Most blacks see themselves as presumably innocent due to their past oppression and whites have never been able to avoid feeling guilty about blacks" past suffering. The source of blacks" innocence is actually their victimization that they have endured for so long. .
According to Steele, nowadays whites refuse to accept that guilt and many of them argue that it wasn't them who brought racism into existence but their parents and grandparents. So placing the blame on the people in the past is a way of accepting the innocence for the people in the present and suggesting that whites are also victims of an angered black race. Steele admits hat many blacks use guilt against whites as a mans to power but he also says that it is in fact wrong for any black person to engage in such activities - it is the same thing that whites have been doing for centuries - using your own gain power. .
It's not whites" fault that blacks aren't succeeding but their own, Steele claims. They ignore individual responsibility to keep themselves from facing the failure while they protect their own self-esteem from being further damaged. Instead of taking the victim role blacks should only ask the rules in the society to be fair and from that fairness blacks will hold their individual responsibility and gain power.
"After 20 years of implementation I think that affirmative action has shown itself to be more bad than good and that black -whom I will focus on in this essay-, now stand to lose more from it than they gain" ( Steele 327). ... As said "Under affirmative action the quality that earns us preferential treatment is an implied inferiority" (Shelby Steele 329). ...
General Steele is now on the move. ... Now we have to come to Steele's Camden Campaign. ... Steele continues on to Camden and takes it. ... Not good for Steele. Next a large supply train enroute from Camden to Pine Bluff is attacked by General Shelby using similar tactic of Poison Springs. ...
In "In the Kitchen," Henry Louis Gates Jr. illustrates how social acceptance changed his appearance a as young Afro-American, while in "On Being Black and Middle Class," Shelby Steele contests that social status and race cannot be related. ... Steele also concluded that society effects the way people identify themselves, but in a slightly different way than Gates. ... Steele clearly states that she does not believe that blacks can coexist in both realms and, because of this, blacks are again forced by society to identify with something that they are not, in order to be accepted. Both Gate...
Shelby Steele states, "I think affirmative action has shown itself to be more bad than good that the blacks now stand to lose more than they gain" (Mills 39). More specifically, Steele feels that affirmative action has a negative effect on African-Americans. ... According to Steele, "It [affirmative action] is "owed," a form of reparation" (Mills 43). ... Steele claims, "Even when the black sees no implication of inferiority in racial preference, he knows that the whites do, so that- consciously or subconsciously- the result is virtually the same" (Mills 42). ... In addition, affirmative...
Shelby Steele states, "I think affirmative action has shown itself to be more bad than good that the blacks now stand to lose more than they gain" (Mills 39). More specifically, Steele feels that affirmative action has a negative effect on African-Americans. ... According to Steele, "It [affirmative action] is "owed," a form of reparation" (Mills 43). ... Steele claims, "Even when the black sees no implication of inferiority in racial preference, he knows that the whites do, so that- consciously or subconsciously- the result is virtually the same" (Mills 42). ... In addition, affirmative...
"Had America worked from the 1960's on to educate blacks to the same standard as whites, had it truly labored to eradicate discrimination, there would be more virtue or power on both sides of the racial divide today" (Steele 442). ... Shelby Steele, a leading black conservative, argued that affirmative action served primarily to assuage the guilt feelings of whites, while denying blacks the right to be judged (Ashmore 344). ... "It must also involve an extension of democratic principles to what might be an extreme degree in a racially homogeneous society" (Steele 443). ...
Furthermore, this sort of grounds for the practice, whether just or not, could very well play its part in convincing people, as Shelby Steele fears, that the means to advancing oneself in society is to be a victim of that society. ...
Furthermore, this sort of grounds for the practice, whether just or not, could very well play its part in convincing people, as Shelby Steele fears, that the means to advancing oneself in society is to be a victim of that society. ...
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. According to the Merriam-Webster New World Dictionary, Affirmative Action is defined as an active effort to improve the employment or educational opportunities of members of minority groups or women. To put that definition in English, it means a program des...